*bounces with excitement*

I've been desperately busy this week. Whenever I really look forward to something (i.e. HP), I tend to create a tasklist of about a hundred things I have to do first. I plotted out every day, Sunday-Friday, and have kept very busy. A lot of little stuff, like picking up the house and doing laundry and dishes, and my TV reviews, and I read/saved all the HP fanfic I've been bookmarking and ignoring for the past month...

...but mostly what's been eating up my time is near the beginning of the month, I took a look at the numbers and got it into my head that I really, really wanted Deathly Hallows to be the hundredth book on my reading list this year. It was a tight squeeze, but I crammed in the last ten between Sunday and Wednesday. :) Not having a job/school helps.

And then I decided that I needed to read the fat novels one more time before the new book came out, so it was GoF on Wednesday and OotP yesterday and as of today I'm 1/3 of the way through HBP, saving the rest for tomorrow to distract me while I wait for the delivery guy, which took until 4 PM last time. And that's the very last thing on my to-do list. Well, after this Standoff review, anyway:

"Severance" - series finale; well more like "last episode before production shut down."How amusing that we got Clavo Cruz (sorry, that's always how I refer to the actor, the one playing the male hostage) to spice up the last episode, though a Mexican Soap Opera Standoff would not have been my choice case to bow out on. And I cringed in pain at the idea of all those beautiful dolls being blown up. Well, that's enough about the case.

Hey, people...look, it's a recreation of how Matt and Emily got themselves into trouble in the first place! *is unamused* Random act of "God, I feel horny, you? Excellent, let's shag." Hate that. Hate. This is why I can't stand Grey's Anatomy. This is why I was so happy about a romance on a crime show, I thought we would never have to see this! I don't care how quickly it cut away, it wasn't quickly enough.

And being as it was filled with awkward moments, this episode felt like we flew back in time and erased all the progress the series had made thus far. It was horrible. I don't want to see the early days of their relationship. It was nice that they had 3 months of history when the series started, and took no time at all to orientate themselves comfortably into the beginnings of a serious relationship. But this week we were stuck watching the uncertain looks and the random spots of jealousy and the OVERWHELMING AWKWARDNESS.

Meanwhile, I suddenly hate Matt so much for acting like a spoiled brat of a child whose favorite toy got taken away, when he was the one who broke up with her. "She hurt you so you're trying to hurt her back," is the symbolic line Matt uses during negotiation. WHAT? God, that was irritating. Something tells me this would benefit from analysis in fanfic, but I have no idea how you'd go about it, and personally I don't really want to try getting inside Matt's head at the moment.

I think the other symbolic sentence of the night was "it was a pre-emptive strike" and something about "dumping her before she could dump him"...yeah, whatever. Not for the first time, I begin to wonder if all their metaphorical negotiation talk ever just plain confuses their HTs, the way the interns on Grey's Anatomy babble nonsense to their patients as they obsess about their own lives.

Also...Cheryl didn't really order tactical just to get Matt and Emily to make up, did she? Because that's totally how it came across.

And as far as M/E goes, the ending is left pretty open-ended. Normally I love "create your own canon" endings, since they can please a wider audience, but in this case, I don't know anybody watching this show who doesn't want Matt and Emily to have a happily-ever-after ending, so I think that was a stupid way to go. I wanted one last Cute Moment! Stupid effing breakup last week.

End Standoff review

P.S. Bets Are Placed: My particular rules, observed only within my family, state that you get three free chances at predicting deaths. My money's going on Harry, Draco, and Percy. Mom says Ron, Snape and McGonagall. And Voice, because she's evil, has claimed Lupin, Tonks and Ginny.

I also have longshot odds on Luna and Neville. Mom's got longshot odds on Neville and Hermione, and Voice is angling for the twins.

Edit: Because stunt_muppet inadvertently reminded me about it, I introduce into the public eye my written-long-ago Cracktastic Pairings Survey, Round II. I thought perhaps I'd just link to it instead of spamming your flists, when many of you are away and avoiding DH spoilers by avoiding LJ.